How I Started Making Art Quilts

I became an art quilter one day when Dianne Finnegan, who had a large collection of my scarves, told me that she was going to get me to make a quilt for QUILTS 2000.

A bit of background. It was the time of the lead-up to the Sydney 2000 Olympics and Dianne, with Karen Fail, Margaret Wright and the rest of a small group of ten women had dreamed up this idea of a nationwide quilting project, with the aim of raising funds for the Paralympic Games 2000 (or Special Olympics as they are known in some places), from the sale of donated quilts. This was a world first in fund-raising for the Paralympics. By the time of the Sydney 2000 Paralympics, QUILTS 2000 had raised over half a million dollars and had become the world’s biggest fund-raising event using quilts.

But when Dianne first told me of her plan for me to make a quilt, I told her I could not do it. I had never made a real quilt before.

Diane is a very persuasive woman. She got me out of my comfort zone and with help from her I created the quilt Colourscape, which was displayed with the other QUILTS 2000 works and featured on a full page, in full colour, in the beautiful book, QUILTS 2000, Australia Celebrates, by Karen Fail and Dianne Finnegan.

91 cm x 118 cm( 36 x 48 inches) Wool, Silk, Machine Pieced, Hand Quilted

Colourscapes, to my surprise  was one of the highly commended quilts, was purchased from the Internet. by an American collector. She was planning to have this stretched and framed, but I never heard the end of the story.The quilt sold  for $1500, this surprised me at the time, I was new to the quilt world!

This is the text that was written for the book back in 1999.

The colours, shapes and patterns of Australia, as seen in the ever-changing landscape, people and culture, were the inspiration for Suzie’s first quilt, Colourscape. Since many quilters had been using her hand painted silk and wool off-cuts for their quilts, making her own quilt was a natural progression With encouragement and a little coaching from her friend Dianne Finnegan, Suzie constructed the top of the quilt, using a variety of hand painted wool crepe fabrics and off-cuts from wool jackets she had produced over the last ten years. The quilt is backed by a piece of hand painted silk which was originally destined to become a shirt. Suzie found that in making Colourscape, she has discovered a new vehicle for self-expression with the stitching a rewarding, relaxing, meditative process. Suzie readily donated her first art quilt to QUILTS 2000 in recognition of those who rise above their personal challenges and show us that there is hope for all of us.

Suzie Cheel is a professional textile artist. Through her business, Suzie Cheel Handpainted Originals, she has exhibited and sold her hand painted textiles in Australia and the United States since 1986. Special milestones for Suzie were being awarded the Alice Annual Craft Prize, in Alice Springs in 1980 and 1997, being selected for the Tamworth Fibre Exhibition in 1990, and receiving the Award of Excellence for hand painted silk from the Australian Silk Corporation at the Australian Craft Show, 1991. She has been a regular contributor to Australian Textile Fibre Forum since 1991, writing on Making a Living in the Textile Arts. 

Tags: Dianne Finnegan, Quilts 2000, silk wool